5/10 Impact Wrestling Review: Opening segment with Hardy and Decay was fine, very week episode this week on Pop TV

With Slammiversary a month away TNA kicked all of their current feuds and angles into full gear tonight with a lot of storyline progression, but a very weak episode of Impact compared to the year that Impact has had thus far this year. There wasn’t near enough in-ring action for my liking and the promos/brawls/segments we got weren’t near as good as weeks.

The opening segment with Hardy and The Decay was fine and at least gave us a reason as to why The Decay would attack Hardy. It’s always weird to me when a dark heel act does something for money but I guess that it is the classic heel reason to do anything so its fine. Hardy teaming with Storm for Storm’s rematch seemed as smart of a partner as any for Storm and the match was fine, yet way too short. All of the stuff with the Willow’s was weird, and if I am not mistaken something Jeff and Matt did in their OMEGA days, and it is pretty clearly Matt Hardy playing mind games with Jeff. I don’t know if they really expect that to be a mystery or not, but I think most everyone knows who this is going to end up being toying with Jeff. Jeff getting so pissed about someone impersonating Willow was pretty amusing however.

Lashley and Galloway’s dueling promo was good and I love that Lashley is playing this role of mentally getting into guys heads, like he did with Kurt, which is not something you see a monster heel like him do. The match between Drew and Drake was pretty good as both of those guys are scary athletic for men their size. They didn’t get enough time to really kill it though.

Yet another week with not even a mention of the X-Division just continues my irritation with TNA in regards to that division. They are starting to rebuild the group with a nice crop of young guys right now (Mandrews, Zema Ion, Pepper Parks, Trevor Lee, Tigre Uno, Andrew Everett, Caleb Konley). You have two hours each week, there is ZERO reason why the X-Division shouldn’t get fifteen minutes each week for promos, matches, or both. It’s actually pretty damn pathetic in my opinion.

Jade and Gail just keep teasing us with these short matches. It is pretty clear they have an amazing match in the tank but TNA just absolutely refuses to pull the leash off of them and let them go all out. I like that they are introducing new characters in the division but Jade and Gail are still your best two. Let them kill it in a feud for a while, a more athletic Gail vs. Kong feud, while you build some more challengers away from them.

EC3 and Bennett had a pretty decent promo between the two but I absolutely despise the use of gimmick matches like they used tonight. An unadvertised Steel Cage Match just screams Vince Russo booking. It is frustrating as hell and to put out a cage match with no build annoys the hell out of me. The match itself was fine but it went about 7 minutes and it is difficult for a much bigger babyface to do an entertaining Steel Cage Match with a smaller heel. It was fine for what they did and I do like Bennett putting EC3 through this little gauntlet of tests before he will get him his rematch. It gives EC3 something to go through and look strong while EC3 and Bennett don’t have to touch again until the actual match.